Advanced content publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS platform have effectively improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is a great thing for entrepreneurial-minded people thinking of starting a website that they can manage by themselves.
Before “blogging” and the introduction of sophisticated content management systems, if you needed to get a professional website for your business, you typically had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were completely done. This process could take many weeks, sometimes even many months!
The introduction of WordPress themes helped change all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how they help you and your business save money on web design costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your site.
Web Site Design Revolution
Businesses are benefiting from a revolutionary change in website design that started a number of years ago. If you are a business owner, you may want to know more about this, because it can save your business a lot of time and money on web development and web design costs.
In a nutshell, this is what happened before a CMS system like WordPress came along:
First, you would meet with a website development company or designer for a brief. Next, the design of the website itself would be discussed and agreed upon. This required spending time with someone with web site design skills going over areas of the website like the, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your website then had to be hand-coded with all of your design elements and codes scripted into the page content. All the pages were then assembled into a website using links and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with all other files needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything passed testing and worked the way it was intended to (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site deemed to be finished and ready for delivery.
The next step in the evolution of website design was the introduction of “website templates”. A web site template allows design elements of the website to be worked on separately from the page content. Having ready-made templates helped speed up the process of developing web sites and resulted in reduced production costs. This also enabled website developers to service smaller business clients and clients with less money to spend …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As the number of web site development firms using “template-based” web design services increased, templates were developed that could offer a number of custom settings, such as colour palettes, the ability to select different menu styles and styles, and so on.
As websites and website editing tools evolved, website templates also started transforming into web templating “systems” that enabled users to customize the visual components of their site.
Then, a “blogging” software called WordPress came along and helped to start a new business website revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
About WordPress Themes
WordPress themes expand website template systems even further.
A WP theme controls and unifies the design aspects of a website. It allows you to add a “skin” to your entire site much like a website template system does but it also also provides users with complete control over the management and customization aspects of template features.
As WordPress explains in its website …
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
(source: WordPress.org)
As stated above, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website displays to visitors does not affect the management of your content.
In plain English terms, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the design of your site as often as you want without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if your website has been configured for e-commerce, changing the entire look of the site with another theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site settings and product information will remain intact, but your site will look completely different.
This is huge! Why?
Because with WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your site’s web design is completed. You can get your business website built quickly and start with any theme you want, and then completely edit the look, feel and design of your website in a few minutes, whenever you want … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without having website code programming skills. Simply pick any theme you want, upload it to your website and activate it. WordPress lets you change your web design and customize elements like headers, layout, typography and more in less than a few minutes …
Since WordPress is open source software, hundreds of website designers from all over the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are normally distributed freely under the terms of the GNU License Definition, or sold as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE WordPress Theme Directory which allows WordPress users to download and access, thousands of great website templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – WP Themes Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress soars, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of uses.
WP themes range from professional-looking, to designs that are spectacular and would typically cost many hundreds of dollars to design. Surprisingly, most themes can be purchased quite inexpensively, especially when you compare the price to what you would have had to pay if a web designer had to code it from scratch.
You can view several WordPress theme galleries containing stunning examples of themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
Themes – Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using WordPress themes over choosing traditional web template design:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Themes are quite easy to install on your site. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the free WP theme repository at WordPress.org) directly inside your WP site’s admin area.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a large community of professional theme developers and development companies who contribute thousands of fantastic WP Themes available to users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent “look and feel” across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, menus, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your website’s content. This makes it possible to change WP themes as often as you want without deleting your underlying content.
- Many WP themes provide built-in features and settings that allow you to customize your theme’s layout and design elements to create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade the theme to newer versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from the admin panel.
- WordPress themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Themes
Many theme designers are now creating “responsive” WP themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly over different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. PCs, iPads, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can navigate, read and display your site on different devices without having to resize anything, or requiring the website owner to install additional themes.
Note: When downloading WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will a responsive theme ensure that the content and layout of your site displays well across all devices, but it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards, practices and techniques of website design and web coding.
I hope that this basic overview has given you a clearer understanding of WP themes, what WordPress themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money on website development costs, and how WP themes allow you to easily customize your WordPress site.
In our next blog post in our article series on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to search for great themes for your website.
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